Vancouver Canucks team awards are open for voting and once again this year I’m stuck on unsung hero.
Because in this market, where the team is covered in blankets, not many Canucks are “unsung.”
The award really needs a renaming. Barring that, a criteria for the Fred J. Hume Award would be helpful, but you won’t find that on the club’s website.
Fair enough. Unsung hero as you define it as a voter, and this is fan voting so I’m sure lots of different lines drawn in different places.
That said, the Canucks will actually steer you in certain directions. Click on their email about awards and you’ll see certain names listed, non-alphabetically, under the four awards.
Are they trying to tell you something? Influence your vote?
So for unsung hero, Nils Höglander, Conor Garland, Casey DeSmith, Nikita Zadorov, Dakota Joshua, and Other are listed as voting options.
Basically, none of the Canucks’ club-record six All-Star Game players, which really doesn’t winnow the field because, of course, all-stars are, in fact, sung.
And in this media environment, guys like Garland, Höglander, and Joshua are sung, too.
So, gun to my head, how about Noah Juulsen as a guy who is actually “unsung?” And if selecting from the sung-but-less-sung, give me Dakota Joshua, in part because of the team’s struggles in his injury absence.